


[-]

by Lscholar



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gen, Post Gold Morning, Pre-Ward, so deuterocanonical I guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 05:24:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12857685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lscholar/pseuds/Lscholar





	[-]

Some days he worked. He had memories of manual labor, enough to know his way around a work site, and the crews were always short enough on men that they paid him afterward, no questions asked, hoping he would stick around for their next job, though he rarely did. The money went mostly toward food, which he kept a whole wall devoted to, and rent, to whatever cape faction had claimed the building this week.

Some days, he picked a direction and walked, out through the City, through slums and business districts and docks and high rises and everything in between; all humanity laid out like a feast. He bought street food; charred corn—spicy soup in a styrofoam bowl—some kind of fried meat, juices sizzling as he bit into it; licked his fingers and kept going, until eventually something drew him back through the infinite City to the room where he kept the binders.

Most days, he stayed in and wrote. His binders were red and blue; red for memories that had been his and blue for those that weren’t. He had used notebooks, but enough pages been ripped out and taped in that the binders were better, even if they were less permanent. There had been a nephew, or a son; he had rampaged for Jack Slash. He had been grown in a vat, and there was a little chip watching him. After the Daybreak, he’d been visited by a couple of official-looking people in suits, who had explained about the chip and the truce. They had set him up in the room, warned him that the chip would track him, and left him alone. That was fine by him. He needed time to think.

Daybreak. Gold Morning. Whatever you called it, it had been a fucking mess. He’d been cowering deep underground, wondering about his destiny and purpose and life and all that shit, after killing the Burnscar clone he’d been assigned to wait for the heroes with (That had been easy enough. Red and blue binders were in agreement: he hated capes.) when he had been taken. A portal had opened, just outside his range; a haughty looking woman in a blue cape marched through it. She had become resistant to his power somehow, retaining enough of her own to throw him through another portal—and into Hell.

He had thought his life Jack had been as bad as it could get; surrounded by monsters he could never have hoped to kill, confronted with other versions of himself. He forgot about Jack sometimes, when he was busy with the binders. 

His limbs had not been his own. He’d been moved, by telekinetics, portals, vines, and other foces from cape to cape, in attempts to nullify powers, contain those that threatened to go wild, and tank hits. The Slaughterhouse had followed him; he’d been forced to bleed almost to death for a version of Crimson, because of his enhanced strength, had his left arm given to a flesh tinker for the possibility his ability might transfer and for a moment he seen the golden reason for all of it and been scared completely shitless.

This wasn’t Hell, and he was no longer a Hatchet Face. It was what came after. The sun shone gold on the skyscrapers, and the nameless man knew that he was being watched, and judged.

 

[-]

 

And then one day there was a knock at the door.

He took his time getting up off the couch he slept on. The suits would be the only ones who would know how to find him, and he wasn’t interested in talking to them. By the time he finally opened the door, he expected any reasonable person would have left.

The person standing there didn’t look reasonable. She wore a heavy jacket with a fur hood, army boots, and a cheap plastic dog mask. Even though she was half his size, she stepped forward with the kind of disgusting confidence he’d only ever seen in people with powers. Capes had made him what he was, fucked his face up, in his memories; used and abused him and left him for dead.

It would be so easy, to lunge forward and smash her into and through the opposing wall. His power leveled playing fields. Hatchet Face wouldn’t have hesitated.

She had to have known his power beforehand, he figured, if she’d cared enough to come find him here. There would be repercussions. He was keenly aware of the chip, somewhere in his body; of the second chance he’d been given and the judgement hanging over his head and the two binders open  on the floor.

Red and Blue. Past and Present.

Every cape had been there at the end of the world. Hell had happened to her too and who could come out of that and give a shit about anything?

“You turn powers off?”

He tried to say “What’s it to you,” or “Fuck off.” What came out was “I’m not fighting anyone.”

He knew it was true as soon as he said it, but the girl didn’t seem to care. She slapped a wad of cash into his chest.

“I had to go to a bank for this. Left my fucking dogs outside. You know the big silver tower?”

He did. It was made of some Tinker metal; always silver, never gold. Some cape had paid a pretty penny for that, and he imagined every cape found that understandable.

“Go to the front desk tomorrow and tell them you’re there for Lisa. They’ll take you up. Stay there for an hour a week and you’ll get paid.”

He had to be sure. “And nobody gets hurt?”

“Not unless you fuck it up."

 

 


End file.
